Did you know? Wishpond’s Twitter Contests allow you to increase your email mailing lists.  When an entrant takes part in your contest, you can collect entrants’ email addresses in order to contact them at the time, and in the future. Twitter’s API collects them automatically, but having entrants opt-in through a third party app, by entering their email address manually, is the best way to go to avoid being marked as spam.

What is the Twitter API?

The API is Twitter’s database of user data that includes every Twitter user’s personal information from their age, to who their followers are over to who they follow. It is also the platform that 3rd party apps connect to in order to pull valuable user data to help businesses target their customers more effectively.

How do 3rd party Contest apps use the Twitter API?

When a user enters a contest, they will be asked to connect with the contest app in a pop-up window that appears. The pop-up will:

• Describe the app
• Detail that the data will be transferred through the app to the business running the contest
• Include what permission the business has with the users’ account

These are the two permissions that wishpond apps (and most other contest apps) ask for in this transaction:

1. Basic information: Includes age, gender, location and followers of a user. This information allows you to analyze who your users are – and send targeted emails by segmenting users based on these data points – directly within your Wishpond account.
2. Ability to Tweet on the user’s behalf (optional): This allows our application to publish a Tweet on the user’s Twitter account that invites each of their followers to enter your contest.
3. Ability to ask the permission for the user to follow the merchant’s twitter account before being able to enter the contest (Follow-Gating).

What is the typical drop-off rate that occurs due to this transaction?

Businesses normally see a ~10% drop-off due to some users not wanting to complete this transaction. This is definitely worth the drop-off – not only do you get to see in-depth analytics about your users, but you also get reach to each entrant’s entire Twitter network through the invitation that they Tweet on their feed. The reach is much more effective than that of an ad. To learn more about increasing your mailing lists, and collecting marketing data on your prospective clients, visit Wishpond, the makers of social promotion apps for Facebook Twitter, your website and more!

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